This invention is directed to a system and method for water purification to remove soil, silt and various light organic materials. In a preferred embodiment, the invention permits water purification in conjunction with dredging of lakes, rivers, ponds, ditches, harbors, ports and the like.
Dredging is often necessary for shipping, conservation efforts, landscaping and other concerns. The sludge typically comprises inorganic materials like silt and soil and light organic materials floating near the bottom of the body of water. Current dredging techniques rely on excavation with dredging machinery like a back hoe. While this method achieves some success with inorganic materials, it largely ignores the organic material. Instead of removing the light organic materials that cause water pollution, the dredging operation tends to diffuse the organic materials into the water. Moreover, even though conventional dredging techniques pollute the water with organic material, varying environmental conditions for dredging prevent current practices from providing low-cost dredging and water purification at the same time.
Current water purification methods rely on sedimentation, filtration or flotation. Sedimentation purifiers are efficient, but typically have slow sedimentation rates making them ill-suited to handle the volume of liquid attendant with dredging operations. Filtration techniques provide the greatest degree of water cleansing, but the filters quickly become loaded requiring complicated contingencies for back washing or bypassing the filter to allow cleaning. None of the conventional techniques are equipped to deal with the volume of liquid produced in a dredging operation. Accordingly, there remains a need for a water purification system useful with a dredging operation which offers an improvement in the present water quality, maintains the water quality after dredging, allows for the simultaneous dredging, purification, fast treatment and reuse of sludge, cost reduction and decrease of the required time.